


In Transitu

by 100demons



Series: blood of the covenant [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4048180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/100demons/pseuds/100demons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” she said, breaking the silence, “for someone who doesn’t know how to talk to people without consulting five different self-help guides, you’ve always been stupidly good at seeing through me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Transitu

The sun shone brightly on the day of the first memorial service, softening the edges of a slowly rebuilding Konoha, light gilding the lots of rubble and jagged rooftops into something that Sai thought might even be considered aesthetically pleasing. He reimagined the shadows playing over the shop sign across the street, captured in shades of ink, and committed it to memory. It would be a useful exercise to reproduce it later on paper and compare it to reality, to judge the accuracy of his hand.

Sai slipped through the crowds slowly making their way over to the service, taking care to match his pace with the man walking next to him, a little girl holding tight to his hand. He let himself be carried away by the flow, just one slim figure amongst the sea of formal blacks, paying their respects to the fallen.

The rush of people eventually stopped, spilling into neat rows of straight-backed villagers surrounding the new cenotaph honoring the dead from the war. From this distance, Sai could only make out the faint marks of hundreds of names marching across the smooth stone surface, strokes of kanji glittering in the thick summer sunlight.

It was easier to see Kakashi’s fall of gray hair, clad in simple black tunic and slacks, standing by Naruto and Tsunade, who was wrapped in thick dark formal robes even in the heat and leaning heavily on a cane.

Sai could see a fleeting resemblance to Danzou-sama in the hunched curve of her back, the knobbly fingers clasping the head of the cane, but it faded away as he caught sight of her sharp brown eyes as she glanced over the crowd of people.

She lifted a shaking hand and grabbed Naruto’s ear, jerking him back from his one-sided conversation with Kakashi and towards the podium. Naruto winced dramatically, his arms flailing wildly, but followed her lead.

They both, Tsunade and Naruto, they had the same eyes, Sai thought suddenly, irrationally, unable to explain it even as he felt the weight of its truth settle in his chest. Not like Danzou-sama at all.

“Sai!”

He flinched, chakra coiling in his fingertips, his other hand automatically reaching for his scrolls and inks.

The rows of people automatically parted, scattering like birds before Sakura finally reached him, her hair tied back in a austere bun, eyes burning bright against her peeling summer tan.

Sai forced his fingers to relax, slipping his ink brush bank into his sleeve holster.

“There you are, I’ve been looking for you for ages,” she smiled at him, slipping by his side with a grateful look towards the man next to her, who automatically moved aside with a deferential nod.

“Haruno-sama,” he murmured, touching his fingertip against his forehead, in imitation of the green seal on her forehead.

Sakura flushed, her cheeks turning pink, but she nodded back at the man, the tilt of her jaw determined.

Sai couldn’t help but stare at her, at the great big puffy bruises under her eyes, the skin peeling off her nose and the spattering of freckles across the bridge, the torn skin of her chewed up bottom lip, at her steady green eyes, crinkled up in the corners as she squinted against the bright sunlight.

“Should I be calling you Ugly-sama, now?” he said.

Sakura flashed him a wry grin and she flicked her fingers at him. “Well, at least I’m assured that my ego won’t ever get too big with you around.”

He caught her finger and tugged, gently. “No, I don’t think so,” he agreed. “Super Ugly-sama.”

Sakura made a face at him, sticking her tongue out, and snatched her hand away from him. “And to think I bothered to stand with you during the ceremony.”

Sai tilted his head. “Why are you here?”

She gave him an irritated look. “What do you mean, why’m I here. It’s the memorial service, only the guards are on duty right now.”

Sai jerked his head towards the podium, where Naruto was conversing with a sound technician about the microphone set up, curling around the platform and snaking towards the back of the memorial in a mass of wires. Kakashi was discreetly paging through a brown-paper covered book with Tsunade peering over his arm, cackling every so often.

“You should be up there, with the rest of your team,” he said, quiet. “And Tsunade-sama.”

Sakura gave him a distinctly unimpressed look. “Well guess what, asshole, you’re on Team Seven too. Can’t get out of it, it’s a lifetime membership deal that ends only upon the event of your death, and even then Naruto will probably make us hang out in the afterlife.”

Sai blinked.

“Besides,” Sakura said, and she looked over at the cenotaph where Kakashi, Tsunade and Naruto stood, her arms crossed over her chest. “That’s a strictly Hokage only event.”

“Oh,” Sai said.

“Unless you want me to go,” Sakura said, her voice a little stiff.

“No,” Sai said, surprising himself a little, and even Sakura, judging by the way she looked up at him, her eyes widening a little. “I’d… like it if you stayed.”

She grinned up at him and opened her mouth to say something before Naruto coughed, amplified a hundred times and broadcast throughout the memorial site.

“Thank you all, for gathering today to honor our fallen brothers and sisters…”

While Naruto began reading aloud the names of the dead, in a slow, somber voice, Sai felt Sakura’s hands brush against his as they flexed, clenching into tight, white-knuckled fists.

 _Sorry_ , she mouthed at him, her dark eyes glassy with unshed tears.

Sai reached out for her fisted hand, curious. She tensed for a moment before relaxing, letting him take her hand and slowly unfold her fingers.

Her short nails had dug in a row of bloody red crescents into the flesh of her palm, the skin around it bone white and stiff.

Wordlessly, Sai slipped his hand into hers and gently folded her fingers around his. She looked up at him, eyes full with raw emotion, and squeezed tight.

They stood together like that, for the rest of the service, hands clasped together, her blood drying on his skin.

(She said nothing at all when Shin’s name was read aloud and his fingers clenched on her hand, edging just short of breaking bone. Her face was still and impassive, but a tendril of her chakra curled around his wrist and sank into his skin, radiating a soothing warmth. She didn’t let go.)

 

* * *

 

Sai had drifted to the edges of the crowd, close to where the boundaries of the meadow blurred into the forest, deftly avoiding the clumps of people that still remained after the close of the ceremony. People bowed their heads in loose circles, sharing tears and tissues and most bizarrely of all, laughter.

Sai watched as Yamanaka Ino leaned her head against Nara’s shoulder, her back hunched as she choked back a laugh over something she had said, tear tracks still wet on her face. Akimichi Chouji’s hand rubbed soothing circles on her back, his other hand wrapped around Shikamaru’s thin wrist.

“It’s alright, it’s okay to laugh and cry and grieve all at the same time,” Sakura said quietly, as if she had read his mind. “Emotions are messy and mixed up like that.”

Sai looked down at their hands, still joined together. He didn’t understand how she still stood by his side, following him when he moved for open space as soon as Tsunade made her closing remarks, as if it were something they did everyday.

He didn’t understand why he still held on.

“Isn’t she your friend?” he asked instead, his voice dispassionate. “I’ve read that friends should offer each other support in times of distress. You should go see her.”

Sakura gave him a sharp nod, her eyes thoughtful. “Yes, but she’s with Shikamaru and Chouji right now. She needs something different from what I can give her, I’d just be sort of in the way, honestly. It’s an Ino-Shika-Chou thing.”

“Ah,” Sai said, thinking of Sakura elbow deep in Naruto’s chest, soaked in his blood, Sasuke kneeling by her side, his fingers tangled in the tattered remnants of Naruto’s haori. “I see.”

He looked over to the cenotaph, much more visible now without the podium and the crowds of people. Naruto sat cross-legged in front of it, Tsunade and Kakashi standing by his shoulders like two mismatched patchwork figurines. They were almost eerily still, except for the wind rippling through Kakashi’s hair and tugging at the edges of Tsunade’s formal black mourning robes.

“Do you need to talk to Naruto now?” he asked, his head deliberately turned away from her.

“Oh,” Sakura breathed and he felt the way she shivered, her fingers gripping him tight. “No, not-- not right now. Maybe later, when he’s finished his vigil.”

Sai dipped his head in acknowledgement and the two of them stood quietly for a few moments, listening to birdsong and the rustle of summer leaves whispering against each other.

“You know,” she said, breaking the silence, “for someone who doesn’t know how to talk to people without consulting five different self-help guides, you’ve always been stupidly good at seeing through me.”

Sai turned towards her, studying the shadows playing over her face, framed by soft wisps of hair in a messy halo. She was chewing on her bottom lip, the skin torn and bruised, while looking down at the ground.

“Eight,” he said abruptly.

She started, her green eyes flicking up at him.

“I have eight books, not five,” he said. “I can list them in alphabetical order, if you’d like.”

Sakura’s mouth parted open, blood welling up in the creases of her bottom lip where her teeth had dug in too deep. She blinked. “Did you just… Is it a bad thing that I can’t tell whether you’re being a pedantic ass or cracking a joke?”

“This is the point where the books said people were supposed to laugh. It’s makes emotional bonds stronger, like nicknames.” Though the nicknames hadn’t gone over very well at all in the beginning, and Naruto’s face still contorted strangely when he was worked up about the length of his penis.

“Oh my god, you just tried to make a shitty joke,” Sakura marveled and she raised her free arm before jerking it back, as if she’d meant to touch his face. “And you’re _smiling_.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve ever expressed emotion,” he said, as dryly as he could manage, and restrained his own urge to trace the faint curve of his mouth. Smiling felt very different when it happened without conscious thought, for all that he had moved the same muscles when he first tried doing it on purpose.

“Really?”

“Maybe my third,” he allowed and Sakura’s face brightened, delight tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Another joke!” she laughed and Sai suddenly wanted to tell her as many terrible jokes as he could think of, all the silly puns he had memorized from the library book he’d borrowed before being shipped out to war, even the one about the frog and the fly that Naruto had told him once over ramen, howling so hard he’d nearly choked on a chunk of pork and Sai had to pound his back. Sai didn’t get it at all, even with Naruto’s haphazard attempt at an explanation, but he wanted to tell her anyway, wanted to hear her laugh one more time.

“I’ve got to hear more over dinner, because you’ve clearly been holding out on me,” she grinned up at him, tugging at his hand and already moving out of the forest and towards the well worn path leading back to the main village.

Sai stared at her, snapping out of the muddled haze of his thoughts. “What?”

“I’m starving,” she said and pulled him along after her. “There’s an udon takeaway place that just got rebuilt on the corner of Morita and Sixth after the owners bribed Yamato with a year’s worth of free food. It should be late enough for their dinner special by now, they do a nice tempura too.”

Sai couldn’t help but follow, her strength guiding him forward. “Whoa there, control your tempura,” he blurted out.

“How many books on humor did you memorize?”

“Two,” Sai said automatically. He trailed after her, just a few steps behind as she pushed ahead of him, impatiently brushing back stray branches with a careless hand. “There are two hundred and ninety nine more puns,” he added. “And knock knock jokes.” He also had amassed a collection of penis jokes he’d overheard in various locker rooms, but he didn’t think Sakura would like them any better than she did Naruto’s old nickname.

Sakura snorted as she looked back at him, her mouth quirking at the edges.

Her eyes glimmered with an emotion Sai could only understand in terms of colors and lines, summer green shading into cool grayish blue flecks around the perfect pure black of her irises, the curve of her tanned brown neck as she turned towards him, the way the corners of her eyes wrinkled up into soft lines.

“Tell me another one.”

He did.


End file.
